Part 1: Some credit cards provide special bonus features, such as a discount on certain purchases, “airline miles” that can be redeemed for plane tickets, or extended warranties on certain purchases.

Part 2: When attempting to eat healthy foods, the battle is often lost at the supermarket: it’s easy to buy a gallon of ice cream and 800 gummy worms, and obviously you’ve got to eat these things once you’ve purchased them.

Proposal:

Thus, we propose a “restricted” credit card (Figure 1) that could operate in one of two ways:

1) It prohibits certain items from being purchased (i.e. junk food is blocked at point of sale).

or

2) It adds a 100% “you are cheating on your diet” tax to these prohibited items.

Fig. 1: Left: a regular credit card. Right: a special restricted-use credit card that would make it easier to not buy junk food. The note on the front is intended for the cashier (“Do not allow the bearer of this card to buy snacks / junk food!”), in a manner similar to the (generally ignored) “CHECK ID!!!” message that people sometimes put on their credit cards.

Implementation of this process could be straightforward, as it would have a high degree of overlap with the existing “restricted items” list that is already in place for government food assistance (“food stamps” / “SNAP”), as seen in the unusually specific list of ineligible items below:

This restricted-use credit card would operate in a roughly similar manner, although it would presumably be unrestricted when dealing with non-food items (i.e. you could still use it to buy an umbrella or car battery).

PROS: Could help promote a healthy diet, thus increasing quality of life and reducing overall national health care expenditure.

CONS: May be difficult to sell people on the idea of “a credit card, but more expensive and less useful.”

During the times of the COVID-plague, it has been recommended that people maintain “social distancing”—keeping apart by approximately six feet.

The issue:

Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow in many situations, for example, on public transit, in an elevator, etc.

Fig. 1: Social distancing is easy when there is no one else around (left), but in a crowded situation (for example, in a supermarket or building lobby), people tend to cluster together (right).

Proposal:

This snake-based “sssssssssocial distancing” plan involves training a territorial species of snake to wrap itself around a person and then give a bit of a nibble to anyone who comes within six feet of it (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: The snake will need to be at least 10 feet long in order to have six feet of length remaining after it has coiled around the person who it is defending.

It might end up being uncomfortable to have the snake coiled around its host / owner, so one improvement could be carrying the snake in a backpack or some kind of modified wrestling championship belt.

Conclusion:

This system would also help discourage “close talkers” who do not respect a person’s need for personal space.

PROS: May reduce the spread of plague, creates valuable jobs for snakes.

CONS: You will probably get a different snake-borne plague instead.

Special Economic Note:

If there is high enough coverage of this system, costs may be reduced by requiring only three feet of snake coverage per person, and relying on the two independently-carried snakes to provide the total six-foot distance.

Thus, it is important to encourage widespread adoption of this system in order to make it more economical on a per-unit basis.

Diet fads come and go, but most have at least one element in common: the requirement that individuals be deliberate about what they eat (rather than ravenously consuming everything like a starved beast).

The issue:

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to have self-control when food is delicious and plentiful.

Thus, most people eat larger portions of food than they really would if they ate a bit slower (as has been discussed previously).

Proposal:

To encourage people to stop eating before they are absolutely 100% full, the following technical solution is devised: “clockwork utensils” that change shape over time (thanks to a spring inside).

This spring must be wound up before use: then, over the course of a few minutes, it unwinds and turns the normal utensil into a bizarrely barely-useable piece of abstract art (see Figure 1 and Figure 2).

Fig. 1: A) a normal fork. B) The “wind-up fork”—when fully wound-up (using a wind-up key like you might see on a toy car or an old clock)—behaves like any ordinary fork. However, as the internal spring unwinds over time, the fork “fans out” and becomes more difficult to use, as seen in part C. Thus, as the meal progresses, the user must become more deliberate about using the fork.

Fig. 2: A) A normal spoon. B) The “wind-up spoon” consists of a number of overlapping metal slats (numbered 1 through 7 here). When they are all deployed, as in part B, they approximate a normal fork. C) After the internal spring has partially unwound, some of the slats will have been pulled toward the handle. By the time the spring has fully unwound, the spoon will be virtually useless!

Conclusion:

Instead of buying a new set of silverware, you should put that money towards funding a manufacturing project to create the utensils describe above!

PROS: Could reduce over-eating!

CONS: May promote binge eating. It may also be difficult to wash the tiny mechanical parts of such a utensil.

Unfortunately, people generally feel, psychologically speaking, that their hands are clean immediately upon rinsing them with even the slightest hint of water.

The challenge, therefore, is to encourage people to wash their hands for the recommended 30-ish seconds.

Although hand washing timers already exist, these are not sufficient—they don’t enforce the washing time.

Proposal:

To improve on the existing “hand washing timer” product, we will enhance the sink’s faucet with a “wash hands” button (Figure 2) that can control the faucet to perform pre-programmed behavior.

Fig. 2: A regular sink (left), and a modified sink with a “wash hands” button (right). A user who wants to, say, fill a water bottle, would use the sink normally. But a user who just wanted to wash their hands would press the wash button instead of interacting with the faucet handle.

When the wash button is pressed, the tap performs the following actions (shown in timeline form in Figure 3):

The tap turns on for ~5 seconds, allowing the user to get their hands wet.

The tap turns down to a trickle for 20 seconds (allowing the user to wash their hands, but not providing enough water to wash off the soap)

Finally, the tap turns on again, allowing the user to wash the soap off their hands.

Fig. 3: Here, we see the timeline of water flow (Y-axis: flow rate. X-axis: time since the button was pressed). The interval lengths could be adjusted as desired.

Bonus fact:

Apparently water temperature doesn’t make a difference: “Contrary to popular belief however, scientific studies have shown that using warm water has no effect on reducing the microbial load on hands” (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_washing). You can fact check that one yourself, if you want!

PROS: May reduce the spread of deadly deadly.

CONS: Could increase the rate of dry hands; this discomfort must be weighed against the severity of any to-be-prevented plagues.

It has been demonstrated that people tend to over-eat in situations in which they can quickly consume a meal.

If a person has to consume a meal more slowly, they will (generally) realize that they are full and eat less.

The issue:

Unfortunately, in today’s decadent world, nearly every meal can be quickly devoured.

Proposal:

In order to reduce over-eating, we will borrow an idea that already exists for dog bowls. Specifically, certain “spiral dog food bowls” have a rim that curves all the way into the center of the bowl (Figure 1). This creates a raised edge that makes it harder for a dog to quickly wolf down the bowl’s contents—the spiral gets in the way.

Thus, the dog spends extra time and effort to get to the delicious food.

Fig. 1: Top: dog bowls already exist in this spiral form factor. So why not adapt the same idea for humans? Bottom: the combination of chopsticks (instead of a spoon / fork / small shovel) and the strangely-shaped bowl should result in a meal that takes much longer to eat.

The spiral bowl above is a good start, but there’s really no limit to how intricate and annoying a dinner plate can become (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: This extremely inconvenient multi-level plate has an arrangement of wire “fences” defending the food. This means that every bite of food requires navigating a dinner-themed wire labyrinth.

Conclusion:

Throw all your current dishes in the trash where they belong—upgrade to this new health-conscious system today!

Hypothetically, this might qualify for reimbursement through your medical insurance! Who knows!

PROS: Reduces over-eating, improves national health, and saves the health care system billions of dollars a year.

CONS: These strange plates would probably be difficult to load into a dishwasher.

In large cities, there are many perils for pedestrians: cars, bicycles, motorcycles, horses, etc.

Even the sidewalk is not a safe zone from scooters and bicycles!

At night, the problems are even worse, since pedestrians are generally un-illuminated and are frequently wearing all-black coats in the winter months.

Proposal:

Since many commuters carry a laptop bag, briefcase, or purse, it would be easy to put some sort of high-visibility indicator on this object: for example, an LED light (see animated designer laptop bag in Figure 1).

This would be less intrusive than wearing a high-visibility vest, and might be an easier sell to fashion-conscious commuters.

Militaries generally have physical fitness requirements and a maximum age cutoff for enlistees.

The issue:

Unfortunately, in most countries, these standards completely exclude government officials from boots-on-the-ground participation in any military operations.

This is unfair to those officials: they performed the diplomatic and logistical preparation for war, yet are prevented from obtaining direct personal experience with its outcome.

Proposal:

The proposal is simple: a “high-ranking government official” waiver that would allow an individual to enlist in the military and serve in a combat area even if they would normally be disqualified (e.g. due to being “too old,” having flat feet, being unable to pass boot camp, etc.).

Since these not-meeting-standards individuals could be a liability as far as actual military effectiveness is concerned, there could be a few restrictions on these “high-ranking official” waivers:

The waivers would only be issued to top government officials.

Only a small number of waivers would be issued. A lottery could be instituted in order to select from the eligible candidates.

The tour of duty could be limited, perhaps to a year or less.

Fig. 1: Although highly-ranked government officials are, on average, too old to be eligible for military positions in most countries, this special exemption would allow them to serve anyway.

This could have the following additional benefits as well:

Increases the ability of these officials to identify wasteful spending in geographical regions that would normally have minimal oversight due to their remoteness.

In countries with less stable governments, integration of civilian legislators with the armed forces might reduce the chance of a military coup. (Or possibly facilitate it, Julius Caesar style.)

PROS: Helps ensure synchronization between a country’s government and its associated military.

CONS: May be disruptive to lawmaking; unclear how international diplomacy would be impacted if a crucial high-ranking official could be suddenly whisked off to a foreign war.